Chapter 06

"One of the skills of being a writer," said Jack, as he pulled out his pipe, "is the ability to capture novelty."

Jack threw his pipe against the wall; it lightly bounced, slid down the curtain, hit a small pipe-shaped trampoline, and bounded back into Jack's hand.

"Instead of the idea of focusing on remembering it, we tend to focus on experiencing it," said Jack, as he bemusedly threw the pipe out the window.

The pipe hit the glass and landed with a wet THUD on the floor.

"Part of that can be intended to set the reader up for a mystery," said Jack, as he walked over and swept up the glass.

Throwing away his pile, Jack placed his finger on a depression on right armrest; a small popping sound came from above Jack - who lifted his hand and caught a pipe.

"Another part of that can be, instead, to reframe something well known," said Jack as pulled out a dormouse-sized pipe and through it through the hole in the window.

The dormouse squeaked, "Thanks."

"The key is to whisper perspectives of the thing to the reader - without resolving the tension until," said Jack, "the timing is right."

…

Martha Triangle's eyes woke up.

Looking northwards and eastwards, she could see the light from the sun.

"It's gonna be a good day," said Martha, as she slid out of bed.

Turning on the coffee maker, Martha removed waste and fed her ficus.

"I wish this thing would grow," said Martha.  "I just can't seem to make it happy."

Grabbing a loaf of flatbread and a thermos of coffee, Martha headed to the work.

Beschdel "Leroy" Pyramid walked around her lab.

Stepping over titanium-coated copper conduit, Leroy thought 'I remember the funding for that wiring was the last step.  Today is the big day!'

'The flux portfolio for the last configuration suggested this iteration would be the one,' thought Leroy, as she stepped in front of a terminal.

Sipping from a coffee cup, Leroy looked at the circular transportation manifold.

Large portions of the manifold along the eastern edge changed colors and shades from grey to white to blue and various other colors without repetition; every so often some of those parts of the manifold would also blink out and then return.

Leroy clicked a series of buttons on the screen and said, "Poly-phasic test 2134-A. September 1, 2020."

Leroy looked over to the other side of the lab at a man dressed in a lab coat.

"Murphy, please initiate roll test," said Leroy, as she turned toward the manifold.

Murphy walked over to a desk with a small screen, various keyboards, and a red button.

"Equipment online.  Configuration calibrated for roll test," said Murphy.

"5. 4.  3.  2. 1," said Murphy. One second after completing the count down, Murphy hit the red button.

Small whirring to Murphy's right drew his eyes to a box.

The underside of the box opened to reveal a silvery ball.

The ball fell, landed in a simple track with three-inch guard rails, and rolled toward the manifold.

Both Leroy and Murphy held their breath as the ball rolled quickly and hit the small ramp at the end of the track.

Leroy watched as the ball jumped from the ramp and flew through the air.

'I've seen this a hundred times,' thought Murphy, as his eyes followed the ball. 'But I never get tired of watching that ball jump.'

Rolling in the air, the ball approached the center of the manifold.

Leroy stared intently at the center of the manifold.  The ball passed through the center and seemed to turn left in mid-air.

From the other side of the lab, Murphy watched as the ball seemed to turn right in mid-air.

Moments later there was no ball.

"Is it tracking?" asked Leroy, as he quickly checked the various controls and looked at the hyper-geometric tracking screen.

"One moment," said Murphy, as he adjusted several controls. "We still have telemetry. Yes, we are tracking!"

"Yes!" shouted Leroy, as he looked at Murphy. "Now if we can get it back."

Sitting close to her desk, Martha sighed and checked her mail.

Several parcels from an angry coworker, a reply-all about an obligation that didn't pertain to her, and a reminder to fill out her paperwork for yesterday's work were the most visible.

She wrote a quick, sweet note to the angry coworker and hand-delivered it.

He was not at his desk.

"I'll put a reminder in my calendar to check in with him later," said Martha as she returned to her desk.

Attaching the small sticky reminder to her calendar, Martha felt a small nudge on her southward side.

Turning around, Martha saw a small silver circle.

'Another one?' thought Martha, as she picked up the circle.  'I wonder where they're coming from.'

Returning to her email, Martha completed her timekeeping administrivia and moved from her desk.

"I hope Mack didn't take an early lunch," said Martha as she went across the hall.

Passing chair, wall, and peer, Martha knocked on the door to human resources.

"Sorry," said a voice from the other side. "We're closed for second breakfast."

"Second breakfast ... what's that?" asked Martha, as she tried to gently open the mail slot.

"Oh, you know what it is," said the voice, "It’s like a very heavy snack between first breakfast and lunch."

"Oh, okay," said Martha, as she continued applying force to the mail slot.

"Can I leave this with you please?" asked Martha as she successfully forced the slot open and dropped her timekeeping amendment through the aperture.

"Okay," sighed the voice, "Try not to be tardy in the future."

"Sure," said Martha, as she returned to her seat.

"Did you see that?" said Leroy.  "What are the sensors telling you?"

"Well ... what I'm seeing doesn't make any sense," said Murphy. "The hypergeometric sensors are tracking position - but one of the sensors isn't providing any feedback."

"Um ... what do you mean?" asked Leroy.  Eyebrows raised, Leroy walked over to Murphy's terminal.

"I mean ... if our calculations are correct, we didn't find a path wormhole to the other side of the galaxy," said Murphy. "We found a way to somehow retain physiognomic integrity while traversing dimensional phase.  Our ball is flat."

And the end of the workday, Martha completed her time administrivia and headed home.

Putting some tea onto boil, Martha fished in her pockets for her keys.

"Huh," said Martha, shifting the circle in her hand.  "This ... feels so odd ... somehow more here than anything I've ever touched."

Pouring some tea for dinner, Martha sat for her sensible meal and continued touching the silvery circle.

'And yet it feels just like the others,' thought Martha, as she sipped her tea.  'They are all oddly identical.'

Finishing her meal, Martha put all the dishes in the dish facilitator and headed to bed.

"I cannot be late tomorrow," said Martha, as she readied everything for the next day.  "I can't afford any docked hours."

As Martha fell asleep, her head filled with strange silvery shapes.

The next morning Leroy unlocked the lab and stepped toward her desk.

Murphy was staring at the monitors.

"I recalibrated the sensors to detect trace amounts of carbon radiation," said Murphy, as he modified several fields.

The manifold changed colors and the humming dropped two octaves and gently muted.

"But we have no idea of that hypothesis is warranted," countered Leroy, as she looked at Murphy.

"Even if there are somehow life forms on the other side of the manifold," said Leroy, "They might not be carbon-based."

"True," said Murphy, as he finished another calculation and diminished the dimensional ambi-phasic density. "But I think it worth the chance."

"Noted," said Leroy. "Have you completed the new configuration?"

After a few mental calculations and a review of the settings, Murphy replied "Yes."

"Excellent," said Leroy as she turned on the journaling software.  "Poly-phasic test 2135-A. September 2, 2020."

Leroy looked again at the manifold and thought, 'Let's see if we can get that ball back.'

"Murphy, please initiate roll test," said Leroy, as she turned toward the manifold.

"Equipment already calibrated. Configured for roll test," said Murphy.

"6. 4.  2.  And.  ", said Murphy. One second after completing the count down, Murphy hit the red button.

A silvery ball rolled along the simple track and headed toward the manifold.

Leroy and Murphy watched as the ball hit the small ramp and floated through the air.

Leroy opened his eyes from a quick blink.

'Oh no,' thought Leroy, 'I cannot believe I missed it this time!'

"As you saw," said Murphy, as he turned off the camera. "As before, the ball seemed to flatten and turn in mid-air."

"With my new settings," said Murphy, as he turned to Leroy, "hopefully we can gather more information about what happens to the ball."

Martha arrived at work with a smile.

'Wow, I really needed that sleep,' thought Martha.

'Sign-in, check books, network,' thought Martha, as she worked through her morning.

Emails from her boss, random spam offering new training opportunities, and out-of-pocket networking opportunities were filed appropriately.

'I continue to be amazed that anyone gets any work done, given how many emails are just distractions,' thought Martha, as she minimized her email.

Reviewing her paperwork inbox, Martha sighed.

Four hours later, Martha stretched.

"I ... think I need some food," said Martha, as she moved from her chair.

Outside the window, a food truck beckoned with pictures of tasty dishes.

After making her way to the truck, Martha waited in line and stared at the menu.

'Should I try the kitten marsala?' thought Martha.  'And why do they have kitten marsala?'

As the line moved, Martha felt in her pocket and pulled out a silver circle.

'I wonder what this thing is,' thought Martha.  'I meant to check this out during lunch today.'

Looking at the menu again, Martha shook her head as she left the food truck.

'If I can just remember where I noticed these,' thought Martha as she walked back in her building, 'perhaps I can learn more about them.'

Pressing buttons and paying, Martha pulled out a shiny bag of food from a small door.

'Not as tasty,' thought Martha, as she shivered. 'But really, how can they have a food truck with pets as the primary food source?'

Sitting back at her desk, Martha reviewed her mental notes on where she had seen the first two circles.

'Oh yes, I was actually sitting here,' thought Martha, as she turned toward one of the floor tiles, 'and the circles both were here.'

'However, I don't see any right now,' thought Martha, as she studied the tile. 'I wonder if someone is leaving them.'

"Okay, that last ball was a wash," said Murphy as he modified several settings. "But I think we need to jump in and send another test sphere."

"This makes especial sense because of that onboard tracking we added," said Murphy.  "Remember the McGuffin?"

"Of course," said Leroy, as she stood by the aperture management console. "I do hope you configured it for bifurcated reporting."

"Um, what do you mean," asked Murphy, as he turned toward Leroy. "I configured it for our current experiment series."

Modulating the augmentation frequency, Leroy said, "Yes - except you forgot to factor in that this was the first of the McGuffin sub-series."

Blinking thoughtfully, Murphy took a sip of his coffee.

"Oh ... oh, yes, that's true," said Murphy, as he quickly prepared another test sphere.  "Perhaps, if we release this one quickly, it can properly attenuate the first."

"Hmmm, that was one of the odder features," said Leroy.  "Yes, let's do it.  Rig it up!"

Finishing quickly, Murphy placed the slightly bronzed silver sphere on the initialization control and looked at his gauges.

"Okay, in five ... four ... three ... two," counted down Murphy as he glanced anxiously at the manifold.

"Now!" said Leroy, as her eyes watched the ball roll and fly into the manifold.

As before, the ball appeared to stick for a moment in mid-air before seeming to flatten and turn away.

"And that's why those figures won't figure," said Martha into the phone. "Please rework them and let me know if you need further clarification."

Resetting the phone, Martha sighed. "I really wish they knew how to add. I mean seriously."

Martha turned as a small popping sound to her right drew her attention.

The tile Martha had spent all lunch studying, as well as several tiles around it, were all a brightly back-lit blue.

"What the .." said Martha, as she jumped into her chair and stared as the light quickly died away - leaving behind a familiar silver circle.

Waiting a little, Martha smelled the air.

"Hmmm," said Martha, "nothing smells like it was burning. How strange!"

Looking at the small silver circle, Martha reached cautiously for the lightly browned shape.

"This one looks a little different than the rest," said Martha, as she pulled out one of the other circles from her pocket.

Holding them close, Martha inspected them.

'They look remarkably the same,' thought Martha, as she tried spinning them.

As Martha rotated them, the light from her desk showed the partially-brown silver circle were without markings - but seemed to it together.

Pulling out the newest circle from her pocket, Martha looked at both the two newest circles.

"Maybe if I hold them next to each other I can tell them apart," said Martha, as she lifted the circles closer to the light.

"OOh!" said Martha as she brought them closer to one another; upon contact, the first silver circle turned slightly brown.

"Doctor!" said Murphy, as looked at his screen. "The sensors are picking up the McGuffins!"

As the manifold started changing colors more quickly, Leroy turned toward Murphy.

"Yes, yes," said Leroy, as she stared at her screen. "The McGuffins appear to be super-luminary.  That's impossible!"

Colors filled Murphy's screen as various controls toggled between reading 0.0 and 100000.0.

"The old balls were never supposed to touch the McGuffins," screamed Murphy, as he hurriedly toggled several fields.

"Well, that's stupid," said Leroy, as she turned toward Murphy. "We have no idea where they're going - and no way to tell if they would.  Why would we use them?"

"But you approved them!" said Murphy, as he looked at the manifold; the center of the manifold began to gently distort the light travelling through it.

The manifold slowly began to vibrate; the equipment to which the manifold was attached began to quietly whine.

"Yes," replied Leroy, as she rolled her eyes. "But that was before the security patches they forced us to install.  Those IT people have no idea how to do their jobs."

'Well, you could have ignored them,' thought Murphy. 'Just because we're on a college campus doesn't mean they get a say in what we're doing.'

"I guess I could have waited to install the hotfixes before this morning," said Leroy, "it's just that the last time we did that, other things stopped working."

"The other thing is," said Murphy, as he turned toward the manifold, "there is no way they understood or knew what you were using them for."

"Hah!" said Leroy, as she looked at the manifold. "That is true."

Placing the circles back on the floor, Martha turned to grab her camera.

"These would look amazing on the floor," said Martha as she turned back toward the circles.

The circle were nowhere to be seen.

"What ... did they just slide away?" asked Martha, as she reached out to where she has placed the circles.

As Martha's fingers neared where the circles had been, Martha felt the air vibrating.

Reaching out to stop herself from moving toward the vibration, Martha reached out with her left hand to find purchase.

Her left hand found her lamp, her desk, her chair, and then found her sliding toward where the circles had been.

As Martha neared where she approximated the vibration to be, she felt the vibrations slow down to a near stand-still.

As each wave of vibration moved through her, from hand to hand, she felt disoriented without being nauseous.

'What is happening?' thought Martha, as her office slowly grew blurry. 'I can't see my chair!'

As she got closer to where she had placed the circles, she felt her right hand reaching further than it had ever previously.

And then it began to stretch.

'Why doesn't this hurt?' thought Martha, as she felt her arm bend, flatten, stretch, twist, and extrude. 'And why can't I feel my fingers?'

'And why can't I see....' thought Martha, as the odd folding reached her head. Images of many places at once appeared to Martha.

As Martha's other ear, other shoulder, other elbow, and other wrist followed suit, she dropped her camera.

And the camera, having snagged on her sweater, followed Martha as her body folded through the vibrations.

"Dr. Leroy, I see the test subjects!" said Murphy, as he watched two balls appear in the middle of the manifold.

Murphy ran to the manifold, placing a padded, glass tray near the bottom of the manifold.

The two balls, tethered together, bounced several times and landed on the padded surface.

"Whew," replied Murphy, as he looked at the balls. "That McGuffin sensor did exactly as promised.  I hope it didn't touch any of the other balls."

As Murphy continued studying the balls, Leroy saw the center of the manifold ripple as it had when the balls appeared.

"Murphy!" said Leroy, as her eyes moved between her gauges and the rippling air. "The organic field detector was triggered."

Murphy looked up.

"What?!" said Murphy, as he leaped backwards while holding the glass tray.  "We only included that for later trials!"

A vague shape appeared within the rippling air.

"Right," said Leroy, as she watched the shape grow in size without growing in clarity. "But why did we turn it on?"

The shape grew sharper and appeared to move in place without growing larger.

"I ... guess I was hoping we would eventually find water or something," said Murphy, as he continued to eye the shape.

As Murphy spoke, the shape seemed to move slightly toward his voice.

"Well, it looks like we found something," said Dr. Leroy, as she toggled one of the controls on her screen.

The manifold began to hum and the various light sequences reversed their sequences.

The air within the manifold began to hum; the vibration seemed to slowly expand to include the desks and furniture to which the manifold was attached.

"Unfortunately, we need to send it back," said Leroy, as she re-sequenced the pan-dimensional configuration.

"If that thing really is a two-dimensional creature," said Leroy, as she sadly looked at the shape shrink. "It would be perpetually out-of-phase with our world, slice through the floor, and wreak havoc on our planet."

Confused, Murphy looked at Dr. Leroy.

"But that doesn't make any sense," replied Murphy, as the shape became slowly dimmer.

"What do you get when a point-mass travels through space?" asked Leroy, as the shape disappeared.

"Well, if it wasn't just theoretical ... and actually interacted with other mass ... it would crash into everything," said Murphy.

"Right ... now what happens if that point-mass has no depth?" asked Dr. Leroy as she sadly turned off the manifold.

"Um, well you'd have mass being moved at an atomic level - but the gravitational pull would somehow be moving and source-less." said Murphy.

"Yup ... and so if your point-mass never stops falling, what happens to the things it falls through?" asked Leroy.

"Oh ... I guess that the point-mass would act like a kind of sub-atomic knife, splicing everything in two." replied Murphy.

"And now imagine a creature like that - ever falling, seeing only a sliver of the world around her, utterly confused, destroying everything she touched." said Leroy.

"Well ... that's just creepy," said Murphy, as he wrapped his arms around his body. "If you knew what was going to happen, why did we do this?"

"Because I didn't expect to pull in anything or anyone," said Dr. Leroy, as he turned off the manifold.

As Martha was de-stretched and bounced back to her office, her head cleared.

Looking around, she saw her table, her desk, and her lamp right where she remembered them.

And her camera remained attached to her shirt.

"Wow," said Martha, as she took the remaining circle out of her pocket.

"I have to hide these to protect everyone," said Martha, as she thought about how to store them. "I guess ... maybe if I just kept them away from the office."

'Maybe Jake will know,' thought Martha, as she packed up from work.

During particularly slow rush hour, Martha called Jake.

"Hey Jake, I have a riddle for you," said Martha, after Jake answered his phone.

"What's up," said Jake.

"It's a long story," said Martha. She outlined her experiences with the circles and what had happened to her earlier that day.

Traffic picked up as Martha finished the last of the details.

"A small collection of silver circles, a weird humming, and partial blindness," asked Jake. "Did you just, maybe, fall asleep at work?"

"No, I'm serious Jake," said Martha, as she bit her bottom lip. "How do I keep the circles safe?"

"Well ... we have a couple of time-locks over at the lab. We're contractually bound to have them and maintain them - but we have never had to use them." said Jake.

"But, what happens if you do?" asked Martha. "I appreciate you offering that storage - is there anything I can do at home?"

"Ha ha ha, not unless you want to bury them underground," said Jake. "If they are as dangerous as you say, I don't think there is anything anyone could do."

"Ah, okay, thanks Jake," said Martha. Finally arriving home.

"Maybe if I take a bath, I'll be able to relax and come up with a solution." said Martha, as she took off her outer garments and drew the bath.

"And perhaps this circle will make more sense then," said Martha, as she stepped into the water.

The amazing warmth distracted her and she dropped the circle in the water.

As the water around the circle began to glow and sizzle, Martha jumped out the water.

Just as Martha left the bathroom, her house exploded.

And the circle was never seen again.

...

"Of course, simply having a mystery isn't enough for a story," said Jack, as he looked out the window.

The full moon painted curious shapes into the clouds; the memories of smells filled Jack's heart.

"So you must have a balance," said Jack. "The essence of a mystery is really only there as a framework in which to justify action."

Clouds in the shape of a pipe and a bunny rabbit lay over the brightly-lit moon.

"In comparison, wonder can be an amazing thing," said Jack, "as long as it is not over-tempered with explanation."

A cloud in the shape of a dormouse slid down from the sky, entered the window, and landed on Jack's shoulder.

"The other thing about wonder is that you don't actually have to explain it," said Jack, as a second dormouse climbed up outside, left from the window, and attacked the cloud dormouse.

Quickly dissipated, the cloud dormouse scattered leaving bits of mist on the furniture in the room and Jack.

"Of course, the less you explain, generally the less your reader will relate to," said Jack, as he sat down in his chair.

A small breeze blew into the window; as if in response, the clouds covering the moon moved to reveal a beautiful, full moon.

And Jack snores drifted lazily out the window.